by Sally Mandel
“Stay with me,” she murmured.
“Always, girl.”
Soon her breathing slowed and she was asleep.
Quinn struggled out of bed in the dark at 6:00 A.M. Saturday morning, splashed cold water on her face, and tiptoed downstairs to the kitchen. She had wanted to beat her mother to the stove, in hopes that with a restful day Ann might feel strong enough to enjoy the party.
It pleased Quinn to creep past the living room and catch sight of Will sleeping on the sofa. His legs were tangled in the blankets and his feet protruded ten inches over the arm of the couch. Despite the cramped makeshift bed he seemed absolutely relaxed, so abandoned to sleep that he looked as if he might lie there dreaming forever. He would make a decorative conversation piece at the party, Quinn thought. The guests could hang their hats on those toes.
At the kitchen table over a cup of thick black coffee, Quinn relished the early morning solitude of the house. She imagined that the quiet whir of the refrigerator was the sound of the house sleeping, like a giant purring cat. She set down her cup and said out loud, “Okay.” She was fully awake now and ready to begin.
In the refrigerator she found the dozen rolls of cheddar-cheese mixture that Ann had prepared earlier in the week. She sliced them into wedges, arranged them on baking sheets in neat rows, and slipped them into the oven. Next she began combining ingredients for chocolate-chip cookies. While she worked, the pale winter light intensified outside the steamy windows and the smells of hot coffee and baked goods browning evoked memories of other times. She remembered sitting on the stool beside the sink on sub-zero February mornings to watch Ann concoct the fuel that would carry her family through the day. Sometimes it was oatmeal with brown sugar, sometimes pancakes with maple syrup, but always something hot and sweet to chase away the winter chill and send them out the front door with stomachs as warm and round as potbellied stoves. John would tease Ann sometimes, assuring her that a bowl of cornflakes for breakfast would not necessarily promote immediate pneumonia. He would wink at Quinn and say that when the Mallory family left the house, they exuded enough heat to melt the ice off the Charles River, and that if Quinn and he were to roll down the middle of Gardner Street, Medham taxpayers would be saved the expense of snowplows. Ann would laugh, but she always shut the cupboard door with the cornflakes behind it.
Quinn remembered coming home from school in the afternoons to find her mother exactly where she had left her in the morning, in that core of the house where the best and worst of their lives transpired. Sometimes she was standing at the stove and sometimes she was reading the Globe with a cup of coffee, but she was nonetheless there. Of course, there had been the rare occasion when Quinn had clattered through the front door, tossed her books on the table, and heard her sounds die into hollow stillness. On those days there was always a note: Ann had gone to the dentist or to the doctor or to visit an ailing friend. Quinn would grab a handful of cookies, gulp down a glass of milk, and flee.
Out came the last batch of crackers, and in went the first batch of cookies. Quinn dusted the hot cheesy disks with salt and popped one into her mouth. The hot salt and remnants of sweet cookie batter mixing on her tongue were so delicious that she closed her eyes with pleasure. This kitchen. In this kitchen she had confided to her mother that her period had finally, finally arrived; in this kitchen she had sobbed an afternoon away, unconsoled even by hot chocolate and marshmallows, when Margery O’Malley’s puppy died of distemper; in this kitchen she had lost her braids to her father’s scissors of vengeance.
But this morning it was Quinn herself overseeing the kitchen while her mother lay sleeping to an unprecedented 9:00 A.M. Suddenly she longed to return to a smaller size, when she was proud that her nose had finally reached the level of the refrigerator door handle.
“Damn it,” she murmured softly, and for comfort swirled her finger around the edge of the mixing bowl to collect another mouthful of cookie batter. Then she swiped at her misty eyes with the sleeve of her shirt, dumped the dirty dishes into the sink to wash later, and began filling the white wicker breakfast tray for her mother. She glanced at the wall clock once more and shook her head. Nine-oh-six and still not a sound from upstairs. At that moment she heard her father’s quick steps moving toward the bathroom. Hurriedly she made her preparations: toast and jam; coffee for two; flowered china creamer and sugar bowl; linen napkins, hand-embroidered with strawberries, fresh orange juice. But still not quite right. In February there would be no flowers cowering under the crust of snow behind the back door, so she rummaged through drawers until she found a long scrap of red ribbon. She cut it in half and tied a bow on each handle of the tray. Satisfied, she crept upstairs and slipped into Ann’s room while her father was humming in the shower.
Quinn set the tray down noiselessly on the lace-covered dresser. Ann was asleep, covered with a rough woven blanket sent by an Old Country relative long since dead. With the shower still on they were assured a quarter of an hour’s privacy. She knelt beside the bed. If you make her well, God, I’ll quit swearing. I’ll give up sex. I’ll be so virtuous, it’ll make You sick. But there was no conviction in the prayer. If God could permit Ann’s illness in the first place, then there was no point in appealing to Him. Obviously, He had no heart. It was a radical thought for a graduate of St. Theresa’s, and she wondered when she had begun to lose her confidence in the Almighty. It was one of those topics that required several hours of uninterrupted thought. She resolved to set the time aside to figure it all out, perhaps back in the garage at school. In the meantime she squeezed her eyes shut and willed the positive energy of her young spirit to heal the fragile woman who was once so vigorous, whose features now appeared to have been drawn with the delicate strokes of an Oriental etching, and whose skin was made of the finest rice paper, translucent and too easily bruised.
Ann stirred, awakened, and smiled at Quinn. Through the obstruction in her throat Quinn whispered, “Morning,” and pressed her face into the stubbled weave of the blanket, hoping to avoid the scrutiny of those clear eyes. “I’ve got your breakfast.” Surely the muffled sound of her voice could be justified as a mouthful of blanket.
“Wonderful.” Ann’s hand stroked Quinn’s hair. “I’m hungry as a bear.”
Quinn looked up. “Are you really?”
“Yes.”
Quinn watched with delight as everything gradually disappeared. John arrived, wrapped in a towel and exuding aftershave. She held out her cup to him. “Want some?” she asked.
“Nope.” He had combed his wet hair straight back so that the thick springy waves were flattened into a dark helmet. He saw Quinn eyeing it. “I know, I know. My slick weasel look.”
Quinn and Ann laughed, both thinking that actually he looked especially handsome, with his muscular arms and naked chest exposed. He gathered his clothes into a bundle under his arm.
“I’ll use your room as my boudoir, if you don’t mind.” He tugged briefly on Quinn’s hair and left them alone.
Quinn called after him. “Wake up that hayseed on the couch!”
“If he’s got any sense, he’ll sleep straight through the party …” John’s voice disappeared down the hall.
“Why should he want to do that?” Quinn asked a bit testily. “It’s going to be a wonderful party, and he’s never met any of my friends.”
“Will doesn’t strike me as the partying type,” Ann said.
Quinn stared at her. “That’s what he says.” She set her coffee cup on her knee. “I want it to be terrific. Do you think it will be?”
“It’ll be fine.”
“You haven’t said, Mother.”
“Said what, dear?”
Quinn crossed her legs on the end of the bed and balanced her saucer on her ankle. “What you think of him.”
“What do you think I think?”
“Come on, don’t tease me.”
“I’m sorry. I’ve forgotten what it’s like, all that.” She seemed to drift awa
y for a moment, but Quinn’s anxious face nudged her. “I think he’s quite wonderful.”
“Do you really? Honestly? I mean, I think so, but I wanted you to see how special he is. Sometimes he’s so damn weird it’s hard to tell. He’s so quiet, too.”
“I didn’t notice that.”
“Yeah, well, that’s weird too. I couldn’t believe how he was spouting off to you, right away like that. Sometimes we go a whole evening without him saying more than three words.”
“As long as they’re the right ones,” Ann said.
Quinn smiled. “And what about Daddy?”
“Why don’t you ask him?”
“Because he won’t give me a straight answer. He thinks everybody’s Tommy Flanagan.”
“I think he thinks he’ll do.”
“You want to try that one more time?” Over the rim of their coffee cups, coincidentally raised in unison, their eyes laughed at one another.
“I’m going to marry him,” Quinn said.
Ann set her cup down. She tried to keep her voice level. “Oh? Have you discussed it, then?”
“No.”
They both began to giggle. Quinn’s cup tipped, spilling coffee on her sock and soaking into the white cotton fabric. “Oh, damn,” she said, only laughing harder. She pulled off her dry sock and mopped at the damp one.
“Don’t you think you’d better tell him?” Ann gasped.
“What for?” Quinn replied, and that set them off again.
Finally Ann said, “Dear me,” and wiped her eyes with the embroidered linen napkin. “What do you think he’ll do when you finally get around to telling him?”
“He’d better say yes.”
“Don’t push him, darling.”
The sudden serious tone of voice sobered Quinn up. “I’ll break it to him gently.”
“I don’t know if it’s terribly old-fashioned to ask, but do you … are you in love with him?”
For the second time that morning Quinn’s eyes grew damp. “Terribly,” she said softly. Ann reached out to touch Quinn’s soggy toes, the only part of her daughter’s anatomy that was within range.
Chapter 20
Quinn was in a flurry, shuffling furniture around in a hopeless attempt to make room for everyone while maintaining some sense of decor.
Will loomed over the china cabinet and watched her with amusement. “You look very pretty,” he said. She was wearing his favorite pale blue sweater and a tweed skirt.
Setting the coffee table down in its sixth allocation, she glanced up at him ruefully. “You’re not bad yourself, but look at your legs. There’s no room for anybody else in here.”
“Sorry. I’ll stick ’em out the window when it gets crowded. Or maybe I’ll just take a long walk.”
“Don’t you dare.” She menaced him with an ashtray.
“Cocktail parties are not my metier. You sure you don’t want some help?”
“It’s not a cocktail party, and you can’t help unless you can add an extension to the living room.”
“Reunions are not my metier.”
“People are not your metier.” The doorbell rang and she dropped the cocktail table in a corner by the piano. “Stay there, see if I care,” she said to it. “Coming!”
It was Roseann Smith reporting that everyone had apparently arrived at once and there was a jumble of cars at the bottom of Gardner Street. Quinn ran to the kitchen to enlist John as traffic cop, leaving Will and Roseann to look at each other with fixed smiles. They didn’t suffer for long, however, because within seconds the mob appeared. Will gathered coats, and Quinn kept up an incessant barrage of introductions.
“Hi Jim. Jim, this is Will. Oh, Noreen! Noreen, this is Will Ingraham. Noreen used to eat erasers off pencils in third grade. What a gorgeous coat. Is it cashmere? Hi, Kathy, where’s Norm? This is Will.” Finally, laughing, they conceded defeat and Will set off up the stairs with an armload of coats. He dumped them on the Mallorys’ bed. Ann was sitting quietly by the window in her rocking chair.
“Are you all right?” Will asked her.
Ann nodded. “Tired, but fine. I’m enjoying watching everybody arrive. It’s like going through a photograph album. All Quinn’s old chums from kindergarten, grown up now.”
Will was silent for a moment, standing beside her, sharing the view. “Are you coming downstairs?” he asked finally.
“Later on. You go ahead and show yourself off for Quinn.”
“I’d rather stay here.”
“Yes.”
She smiled at him, and, reluctantly, he left the quiet room.
Even from the top of the stairs the noise from below was an assault. He remembered watching a television rerun of To Kill a Mockingbird when a sensitive scene between Atticus and Scout was suddenly interrupted with a detergent commercial, strident voices shrieking Ring around the collar! Ring around the collar! He sighed and started down the stairs, descending into the volcano.
Will held out his hands for more coats.
“Oh, no, you don’t,” Quinn said. “I’m not sending you upstairs again. Tommy and Margery Almost Flanagan, Will Ingraham.” Margery somehow managed to hug Quinn and assess Will simultaneously. As Tommy and Will shook hands Margery mouthed at Quinn silently: Cute.
Quinn slammed the front door and fell against it in mock exhaustion. “That’s everybody. Thank God.”
“You’re loving it,” Will said.
“You’re right. Come on, let’s mingle with my past.”
“How’s your mom?” Margery asked.
“Oh, much better,” Quinn said. “She’ll be down in a few minutes.”
“That’s terrific.” Margery lowered her voice into an incredulous whisper. Her wild curls quivered with suppressed excitement. “Do you believe Mary Frances DeFalco?”
Quinn glanced around, checking out the proximity of Mary Frances. Safe, she explained to Will, “She was the class … well, the nuns used to tell us not to kiss boys or we’d”—she lowered her voice—“go the way of Mary Frances DeFalco.”
“We thought she was wonderful,” Margery said.
“So did we,” said Tommy. He winked at Will, who regarded him thoughtfully.
“She’s the tweedy one with the horn-rimmed glasses and beehive hairdo,” Quinn said.
“She was carrying signs around outside the State House,” Margery confided. “First it was abortion. Well, I guess she had good reason. And now she’s all fired up over some Godforsaken place in Asia. You’ll see. She’s got buttons all over her sweater.”
“It wouldn’t be so funny if she hadn’t been such a, well, nonpolitical person,” Quinn explained to Will.
“I can imagine,” he murmured.
Noreen and Jim stood beside the piano.
“I was reminding Jim,” Noreen explained to Quinn and Will, “about the time Quinn made us take all the knobs off the classroom doors so nobody could get in.”
“I didn’t make you,” Quinn said.
Jim took over. “And then this one”—he laid his hand on Quinn’s head—“dumped them all in Father Monaghan’s confessional so they’d think the guys from St. Andrew’s did it.”
Noreen rolled her eyes at Will. “My Lord, the things she thought up.”
Quinn’s Aunt Dorothy beckoned from the doorway, and Quinn excused herself. There was an awkward silence while Will tried to remember what Quinn had told him about Noreen in her preparty briefing. The class beauty, he thought. She had shimmering blond hair, green eyes, and lovely skin. But there was a tense catch at the edges of her mouth, almost a tic that punctuated her speech. It made her look brittle. Jim was tall and gangly in the manner of a loose-limbed star member of the adolescent basketball team. Will thought he seemed so relaxed he might crumple to the floor at any moment.
“I guess she’s always getting into trouble up at college,” Jim said loudly. Will suspected Jim had had to repeat himself to get Will’s attention.
�
��Not that I know of,” Will said. “She works pretty hard.”
“The books never stood in her way before, that’s for sure. I hope you college Joes aren’t messing up her sense of humor. Noreen, remember the time just before St. Patrick’s Day when she put green food-coloring in the macaroni and cheese?”
Noreen giggled. “My Lord, it was a classic.”
Jim touched Will’s paper cup with his own in a toast. “You’ve got yourself a real kook there, Bill.”
“Mm,” Will said. He worked up his warmest smile. “Excuse me a minute, will you?”
Quinn squeezed past Tommy Flanagan, who was talking to her father. Tommy was nodding and smiling, nodding and smiling. Come to think of it, Tommy always seemed to be nodding and smiling, and the smile wasn’t very convincing. Quinn gave it a ten for oral hygiene and a two for sincerity. She turned her face from the splendor of Tommy’s pearly whites. Planting him in the same house as Will Ingraham fixed her perspective, she decided. Tommy expended a lot of energy trying to charm, and Will was charming despite himself—assuming he bothered to open his mouth.
“Left where?” Quinn asked.
“I don’t know.” Jim craned his neck over the crush.
“Damn it,” Quinn muttered.
“Doesn’t say much, does he?” Jim asked.
Noreen gave him a warning jab. “I wanted to say hello to your mother. Where’s she hiding? Probably in the kitchen as usual, huh?”
“Yeah, probably. Here.” Quinn handed them each a cup of beer and moved off toward the doorway again.
Jim called after her, “Hey, when are you two going to make it legal?”
“Jim!” Noreen hooted.
“Well, misery loves company,” he said, watching Quinn disappear in the crowd.
“My Lord, you’re such a card,” Noreen said. She snagged Margery as she passed within range of the piano bench. “Isn’t Jim a card, Margery?”
“You coming down, Mom?” Quinn asked.
“Not just now, dear.”
“Everybody’s asking for you.”